TrueLife - In search of poetic imagination…

Episode Date: August 29, 2022

Our world is governed not so much by money & power, but linguistic constructs & lack of poetic imagination

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Fearers through ruins maze lights my war cry born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. I hope your day is going beautiful. Hope the sun is shining. Hope there's a slight breeze just enough to cool you off if the sun is shining on you. Maybe some silver lining in the sky above you.

Hope the birds are singing. I hope that the person you love looked you dead in the eyes today and told you that they love you. I hope you're thinking good thoughts. I want to talk to you today about some of the concepts we live by, specifically language. And even deeper than that, the idea of the metaphor.

Metaphor is for most people. A device of the poetic imagination with a little rhetorical flourish, if you know what I mean. A matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language. It's typically viewed as a characteristic of language alone. A matter of words rather than thought or action. And that seems to me to be something worth thinking about. the words you use describe the world around you. They describe who you are.

They describe where you're going and they describe what you see. I would like to challenge everyone to try and describe all those things in your life about you, in you, around you, your visions of the future and your ideas of the past. I would like to challenge you to. to dress up those instances in a set of wildly beautiful decorations. The words you use have a profound effect on the way you see the world. You see, it's the language we use that helps devise the concepts. And the way I think about it is, have you ever read a beautiful poem and it makes you get goosebumps?

Have you ever read something or heard a really good speaker? Use the rhetoric, the trivium, and other linguistic devices to really grab hold of the audience. That's when you get that feeling of just being really engaged and understanding. and this deep sense of well-being or this deep sense of connection from the spoken word. At that point in time, you're truly communicating. And it usually happens when you are using metaphors, when you're using this rhetorical language with a flourish on it. And I think this is something that everybody can do in their life to make their life a little bit better.

You know, it's the concepts. Our concept structure, what we perceive, how we get around in the world and how we relate to other people. These are not only the foundation for living a better life or inventing a better way forward, but there are things that you can begin doing right now when it comes down to language. Sometimes I think that it's more the whole brain learning. And let me try to break down what I mean by that. So a lot of times we're analyzing, we're thinking, and that comes out in like a parataxis.

By parataxis, I just mean like a really straightforward thought with not a whole lot of flowery language behind it. It's just a regular thought. That is a white bird. That bird is raggedy. You know, it's not, wow, the definition of the yellow feathers on that bird as it flaps its wings from the tree to the hut cause a slight ripple in the wind around it. And if you look close, you can almost see the smoky air bending around its beak.

See, when you start using a more flowery language, not to deceive another, not to deceive another, deceive yourself, but to paint a better picture. When you do that, I think it is maybe the right hemisphere of your brain giving the linguistic concept to the left hemisphere of your brain. So they're working together. In a way, your words, your linguistic attributes paint a picture or a concept for not only your right brain or your artistic self to see, but it allows the person you're communicating to, to also get that picture. I think that should be a fundamental part of language.

I think when you're speaking to other people, one of your goals should be to paint them a picture. It should be to give them an image to hold on to so that they can comprehend what it is. is you're trying to get them to see. Does that kind of make sense? And let me break down a few examples to make it a little bit better. So let's look at language.

Since our communication is based on the same conceptual system that we use in thinking and acting, language is an important source of evidence for what that system is like. Okay. Are you ready for a better... Let me give you some linguistic evidence here. Argument is war. So if I can give you some idea, some linguistic evidence, I'm going to give you the conceptual metaphor,

argument is war. And this metaphor is reflected in our everyday language by a wide variety of different expressions. Let me give you a couple right here. Your claims are indefensible. argument is war he attacked every weak point in my argument argument is war

his criticisms were right on target argument is war I demolished his argument argument is war I've never won an argument with him argument is war you disagree okay shoot argument is war

if you use that strategy he'll wipe you out argument is war. She shot down all of my arguments. Argument is war. Do you see there how that can fundamentally change the outcome of a discussion? If you're using metaphors such as the ones we talked about, indefensible, every weak point, demolished, shoot, wipe you out, shot down.

If you're using this type of linguistic rhetoric in your argument, arguments, it doesn't seem to me that you're trying to solve a problem. You're trying to win an argument because argument is war. So right off the bat, we know if the objective of an argument is to solve a problem and you're using language in the metaphorical sense of argument is war. You see, you're not trying to solve the problem. You're trying to win the war. So there's kind of a lot going on there. You know, you may think you're having an argument. You may think that we're having a discussion and we're talking about different topics. But by choosing that metaphorical vehicle, we have already in a way changed the rules of the game. It's no longer about solving a problem.

It's about winning. And when you want to win, especially a war, we all know all's fair in love and war. So that's when you begin to hurt people. That's when you begin to ruin relationships. relationships. And most of the time, we don't even realize we're using these vehicles in our arguments or in our everyday life. But the way we frame it, the vehicles we use, the metaphors that we use have an incredible effect on the outcome of our everyday situations. I want to really drive this point home. So let me let me just give you a little bit more. here. We can actually win or lose arguments, right? Everybody knows that. You've probably been on both sides of that particular battle. And when you do that, you see the person you're arguing with as an

opponent. You attack positions. You defend your own. You can gain and lose ground. You plan and use strategies. If you find your position indefensible, then you can abandon it and take a new line of attack. Many of the things that you and I do in arguing are partially structured by the concept of war, which we already know, and I've been hammering home, is a huge problem. Even though there's no physical battle, it's still a verbal battle. Right. And when we structure our argument, attack, defense, counterattack, the relationship reflects this. It's this sense that the argument of war metaphor is one that we live by in this culture. And I think it's a big problem and you can see it all around us from our politicians to our business leaders, to our relationships, to even the ones that we

love. So what if? What if we saw an argument instead of a war as maybe a dance? All right? Bear with me here because I'm just kind of spitballing, but wouldn't that make for a much better system of communication. One person's leading. Another person gets to lead. One person moves forward. We act in conjunction with each other. There's a rhythm to our conversation.

There is a sense of shared performance. You see, this is a much more adult and much more engaging and a much more fruitful conversation. Instead of an argument is war. Maybe we could be debate is dance. Right? And if you, if both people see themselves as performers, and the goal is to perform a,

a balanced and aesthetically pleasing type of relationship, I mean, think about what the culture, think about what the people in that particular type of situation would be like. Right? it probably wouldn't, you probably wouldn't even, it wouldn't even be seen as an argument. Right. If we could view arguments differently, we could experience them differently and then carry them out differently.

It's, it's fascinating to think about. And this takes us back to the beginning. This takes us back to the idea that our lives are structured by metaphorical concept. Right. If we take the argument as war structure. right the well let me break it down like this the essence of metaphor

is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another right it's not that arguments are a subspecies of war they're not arguments and wars are different kinds of things everybody knows that even though they may feel

the same when you're in the moment or when things are heated you know verbal discourse and armed conflicts are incredibly different. But argument, the way we do it in the West, and I'm guilty of this in my life, and maybe it's because the way we're taught in school, maybe it's our parents' framework, maybe it's our culture's framework.

But argument, that concept, a lot of times is metaphorically structured. It's metaphorically structured in terms of war. the more that I think about it, the more I think like, how many people are even conscious that they're using this metaphorical structure to have discourse? Like, no wonder we can't get anything done.

No wonder there's so much turmoil out there. You know, what if the language of argument was poetic, fanciful, or even rhetorical. In some ways, I mean, there used to be this show on MTV like your mama jokes or whatever or rap battles for that fact

or even, well, I'll get to another one in a minute, but if you just take those particular types of funny back and forth, one-upsmanship, the funniest ones are ones that are fanciful, that are humorous, that rhyme, poetry in its rawest form, some silly little limerick. That's why we remember all those.

Those are also the structures. If you watch some of the great debates, like the Lincoln Douglas debates, or I saw a good one with Jordan Peterson and Eric Dyson, it seems to me the most salient points are points that have the retortals, flourish on them, that have sort of a poetic structure to them. And I think you can communicate much more effectively if you are conscious of the framework

in which you're explaining things to people, be it an argument, be it a conversation, or be it a lecture of some sort. If you can create that fanciful picture using the structure of metaphor, then your ideas will be conveyed to the other in a way that is lasting. Sometimes I like to think of it as, our language is our linguistic framework for our culture. Our language is our linguistic framework of our culture. I'm going to say it one more time.

the laws of threes. Our language is our linguistic framework of our culture. So I guess if I'm going to drive it home, I would say that the most important claim so far that I've talked about is that metaphor, that structure. It's not just a matter of language. It's not just mere words that get our points across. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's,

that human thought processes are largely metaphorical. It's whole brain contemplation. And that's what I mean when I'm saying that the human conceptual system is metaphorically structured and defined. Metaphors as linguistic expressions are possible precisely because there are metaphors in a person's conceptual system, especially the spoken word.

You know, I once heard a quote that said, I think it was our good friend Samuel Clemens, who said that the written word is the carcass of the spoken word. That's why people are always so leery of a charismatic leader, a charismatic speaker. Because the truth is we're drawn to the spoken word. We're drawn to an orator who has the ability to carry. captivate us like a moth to flame. So that's what I got for today, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you begin to see the world around you in a poetic,

fanciful, rhetorical flourish of a way. I know that probably doesn't really make much sense. I should probably cut that out. I hope you begin to see the world like it truly is. It can be beautiful if you choose to see the world that way. Your life can be fanciful and beautiful and kind and surrounded by the beauty that exists not only in our hearts, but in our minds and the people we love.

That's what I got for today, ladies and gentlemen. I hope your day goes beautiful. Aloha.